
> 3 S W3 



Copyright N" 

COPyRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE PATRIOT PREE/niNENT 



EDWIN n. STANTON 



/( 



/PONOGRAPHS ON THE CIVIL WAR 

1 and 2 -/ 



By the REV. WILLIS WEAVER '3 

1/ 



Copyrighted bythe author, 1922 



^ 



Ab"A 



,S< 



Si'i 



©CI,AGK(!405 



OCT 20 '22 



•he ( 






CO 



A\ E ET 



EDWIN n. STANTON, 

PATRIOT PREEAMNENT, 



FOR^A QUARTER OE AN HOUR 



POSTULATE 

In the WAR FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE 
UNION the issue was determined by the crystahzation of a 
diffuse patriotic sentiment into a flaming spirit of NATIONAL 
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Protagonist of this evolution, arose A MAN unique in his 
day in the combined clarity of his vision, steadfastness of his 
convictions, dominence of his mind over men of aft'airs. and mas- 
tery of his personality over opposition. 

To THIS MAN, probably unexcelled in genius among 
America's heroes, as he was unsurpassed in labors and devotion, 
it was given to interpret the signs of the times, to appreciate the 
gravity of the crisis, to nail to the mast the banner under which 
the victory was to be won, and to lay down his life a sacrifice for 
that l)anner of NATIONAL PATRIOTISM. 

The time must be near when A REDEEMED AND TRI- 
UMPHANT NATIONALITY, after more than a half century 
of indifference, shall awake to recognize what it owes to 

EDWIN M. STANTON, PATRIOT PREEMINENT. 



THE OCCASION 

For nearly sixty years the unparalleled services to his coun- 
try of Edwin M. Stanton have waited for seme sign of merited 
appreciation on the part of the Grand Army of the Republic. 
Though abuse of him has been allowed at their meetings, it ap- 
pears that no fit commendation of one who was their steadfast 
friend and most ilkistrious compatriot has ever been offered at 
a National Encampment. 

At length, and after two years' eft'ort. the writer secured a 
grudging consent that he should occupy a bare fifteen minutes 
of the Campfire, under terror of the thunder of the gavel if he 
should utter a word beyond the limit. Under this handicap the 
speech following was prepared by cuts and re-cuts of material, 
by emissions and contractions and the choice of the briefest 
phrases and even the shortest words on occasion. 

(Copyrighted. 1922, by Rev. WILLIS WEAVER.) 



WILLIS WEAVElo. 
^^047 ELUS AVE,, CHICAGO. 



Edwin M. Stanton, Patriot Preeminent 

By the Rev. Willis Weaver. Chaplain, Dept. of Texas, G. A. R. 

An Address Before the National Encampment of the 
GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

IncHanapoiis, Ind.. Se])t. 28, 1921. 

COMRADES OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUB- 
LIC: 

1 come to you today with a name to stir your loyal blood 
like the sound of a trumpet. I call it up out of the too widely for- 
gotten past as of one worthy to be proclaimed among- us a most 
illustrious comrade, a leader who never wavered, a sharer of 
t)ur every danger and disaster, a ])articipant in every victory and 
trium])h. 

THE PATRIOT Tell me what made the Patriot in 1861— 
what disting-uished the loyal from the dis- 
loyal in that time of supreme crisis, and. from your own definition, 
I will show you — towering above his fellows — the man of genius, 
prophet, advocate and martyr of the cause we hold sacred ED- 
WIN M. STANTON, Patriot Preeminent. 

THE NOTABLE AMERICAN Ivlwin M. Stanton, of a 

Ouaker line of pioneers on the 
front in Massachusetts, Carolina, \'irg;inia and Ohio, and that 
traced back through seven generations and nearlv two hundred 
years in America before he was ])(;rn. 

Edwin M. Stanton, leading constitutional lawyer of his da\- 
by the testimony of a competent authority ; the man "tremen- 
dous," in the word of another; Stanton, declared by President 
Lincoln to be "a wonderful man, a good friend and faithful serv- 
ant ; the rock on the beach of our national ocean, against which 
the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing; who 
prevents them from undermining and overwhelming the land, 
performing his task superhumanlv." 

LEADER IN THE SIXTIES If you ask who of all the lead- 
ing actors in the stu])en(lous 
drama of the sixties stands out in the judgment of historv as the 
su])reme man of the time, the answer can be but the (me name 



that immediatcl}- comes to us all--th;it of our uiarlyrcd F'resi- 
(lent, Abraham Ijucolu. 

If you ask n>e- who of the other prominent actors first and 
most clearly discerned the significance of the conflict, first and 
most heartily espoused the Nation's cause, impressed it most 
effectively on contemporary thought and sentiment, by his 
keener vision, his superior abilities, his commanding personality, 
unfaltering courage, consuming zeal, and the sacrifice of his all. 
even to poverty and martyrdom — who. over and over again, in 
some hour of dire ]ieril. perceived perhaps by him alone, threw 
himself into the breech to receive in his own person the blow 
that was aimed at his country — the answer must be that, for the 
combination of these attributes in their highest degree and the 
contribvition wdiich they made to the successful outcome of the 
struggle, there was none to c()mi)are with Edwin M. Stanton. 

PIONEER OF NATIONAL Long before we were born, mv 
PATRIOTISM Comrades, the youthful Stanton 

made the same consecration to 
the cause of the Union that you and 1 were permitted to make in 
the sixties, and it became the key-note f)f all his after life. 

EIGHT YEARS And as he began before us, so he continued 
IN SERVICE longer. On the surrender at Appomatox, 

Stanton gave you the Grand Review at 
\Vashington ; for it was of his suggestion and arrangement. He 
then dismissed you to your homes and occupations — an opera- 
tion performed with such smoothness and celerity that it was 
hailed as the wonder of the day and a signal triumph of an execu- 
tive skill ranking among the best of any land or any age. Hav- 
ing done this for you, he turned back to one of the most distaste- 
ful and heart-breaking tasks of his arduous career. 

For when you were safely out of the way, the rebel poli- 
ticians and brigadier generals came swarming into Washington 
to capture the capital city at last and to secure by intrigue all 
that you, by immeasurable toil and sacrifice, had prevented their 
winning on the field of battle. 

To defeat them in their purpose was a service as hard for 
him as that of actual war time, and it exhausted his vitality to 
the last shred. Thus, while you were building up again your 
shattered home life, Stanton, as your representative, was stand- 
ing resolute guard, three years longer, over the cause you had 
served. Your service extended, at the most, over some four 
years; his was twice as long. Over eight long, bitter, toilsome, 
killing years the honor and existence and future hopes of the 
American Nation rested in the hand of Edwin M. Stanton as 
never in the hand of anv other since George Washington. 



GAVE DEATH BLOW it was Stanton in his maturity who. 
TO DISUNION months before any of us volunteered,' 

entered the Cabinet of President 
James Buchanan as Attorney General and bearded the lion of 
disunion in its den. When the President asked the consent of 
his advisers to the yielding- of the Charleston defenses to the 
commissioners from South Carolina, he said the surrender of 
Fort Sumter would be a crime like that of Benedict Arnold 
and all participants therein should be hang-ed like y\ndre. "Mr' 
President." he said, "you cannot treat with these men as am- 
bassadors. There is no government in the United States but 
that of which you are the executive head. These men are rebels 
engaged m a conspiracy to overthrow the government and they 
ought to be arrested and hanged as traitors." And he warned the 
1 resident that the secession members of his Cabinet were urgin"- 
him to an act of treason that would render him liable to int 
peachment. removal from office and action under the criminal 
law. 

Thus it was that, in a few ringing sentences. Edwin M 
Stanton made a speech more influential on the destinies of Amer- 
■""^u n !\'^^' °,^^'^'" ^''^'' uttered by any official, whether general 
111 the held, judge on the bench or President in the White House 
hrom that hour there was a loyal government in Washington' 
the rebel^ commissioners were dismissed with little cerenionv • 
Anderson s move to Sumter was approved and reinforcements 
ordered; secession members of the Cabinet were driven out; un- 
der the relentless lash of the new Attorney General the hosts of 
rebel spies and plotters were scourged into flight or hiding- and 
when the Lincoln administration came in it found a city measur- 
ably freed from the contamination of disloyalty-. 

T do not say that Stanton was the onlv patriot of his dav 
or that others did not hold and express the same views What' I 
do insist on is that it was given to Stanton to be the one who 
should speak effectively ; that, as a historical fact, in the Cabinet 
meeting of Presiclent Buchanan, on that twenty-seventh day of 
December, 1860, Edwm M. Stanton, by his first'official utterance 
as Attorney Genera . <lid tip the balance in which the fate of the 
Na ion hung trembling; did crystalize the sentiment and put in 

trkTqom nfcPrS^T^r^r^^ '^''^ ^^^ Union. HE MADE 
TREASON DISREPUTABLE, and thus gave disunion the 
blow from which it died a painful and Hngering death. Up to 
that hour the Spirit of NATIONAL PATRIOTISM had in 
America no certain abiding place-no throne, no scepter, no 
sword; but then, for the first time in official circles, she found a 
sjjokesriian and recognizing her champion, lifted her face un- 
abashed and claimed her own. 



NEEDED BY Tliirtern months laltT, to unixcrsal aiiia/.einent, 
LINCOLN 1 'resident Lincoln called Mr. Stanton, a Demo- 

crat, into his Cabinet as Secretary of War. We 
wondered then, but we now know^ why — that it was because the 
President knew his man ; and further, it was l)ecause Mr. Lin- 
coln. ham])ere(l most of all by the inconi^ruous elements of his 
own party, which had not yet been welded into a unit, saw that 
he must bring" it U]> to the position which this new Secretary of 
his had been holdings in the sturdy Stanton fashion for more 
than a quarter of a centur}-. Here was a man after the Presi- 
dent's own heart, and he straightened his shoulders, rolling" off 
a heavy burden and saying, "Now the armies w'ill m()\e." 

HE MADE THE Put this first to the credit of Stanton in the 
ARMIES MOVE Cabinet of Linci^ln — that he made the armies 
move. For months the President had been 
trying to respond to the call of the country for acti(jn — some- 
thing' to avenge Bull Run and sIk^w that the rebellion was to be 
subdued. He had more than once even g'one to the extreme 
resort of issuing ]>ositive orders for an adxance. only to see his 
orders ignored. It was Stanton's coming into the Cabinet, bring- 
ing" just the qualities the lack of which had renderefl the adminis- 
tration inefficient for ten months of disheartening^ disaster and 
delay, that, by his superior knowledge of law. his freedom from 
])olitical entanglements, his utter fearlessness of the face of man. 
and his overwhelming" personal urg^e. made the armies move be- 
cause he made the President in fact, as he was in name, the 
Commander-in-chief of the military forces of the Union. 

HE DIVIDED THE Comrades of the Grand Army, I charge 
CONFEDERACY \-ou to stand for him to whom fighting 

patriot never appealed in vain. De- 
tractors will have their say. It is for you to tell them, among 
other things, that it was Edwin M. Stanton who split the con- 
federacy in twain along" the line of the Mississi])])i river. 

HE DESTROYED THE It was he who, when the enemv 
REBEL FLOTILLA fleet of gunboats dominated the up- 

per river, ordered the ])reparation 
of rams. That was a new device that had been rejected at Wash- 
ington, and he could get consent only by assuming full personal 
responsibility for the success of the movement. Pie prescribed 
the details of their outfitting, picked the personnel of the com- 
mand, and sent them to the destruction of the rebel llotilla ;it 
Menii)his. 

HE SENT BUTLER It was Stanton who proposed the Bul- 
TO NEW ORLEANS ler expeddition. rescued it from deter- 
mined efforts to absorb it into the 



"quiet" army of the Potomac, and sent it to the occupation of 
New Orleans. 

HE SAVED GENERAL When he had thus driven a wedge 

GRANT TO THE ARMY into both ends of the line, it re- 
mained to complete the rupture at 
the center. "Ah," you say, "here is where General Grant comes 
in." True, but how did he get in to be leader of his victorious 
campaign about Vicksburg? 

When Stanton took over the War portfolio he announced 
his policy — "The armies are for the destruction of the rebellion. 
Their duty is to go out and find the enemy, *4estroy his forces, 
take his strongholds and cities, and restore to federal control all 
parts of the country that he has occupied." A survey of the field 
showed him one man who had the same point of view, a modest, 
little brigadier general by the name of Grant, who, in disregard 
of all the proprieties, had the temerity to go out and capture two 
forts in the West. Looking him up, Stanton found him in dis- 
grace, deprived of his command, under arrest on frivolous charges 
by means of which the swivel-chair generals were on the point 
of driving him into the retirement of private life, while thev 
clamored to high heaven — and to Washington — for promotions 
and decorations on account of what he had done in their despite. 

Rescuing him from their designs, Stanton secured due 
recognition of his victories, made him Major General, created a 
new department for him, sent him to the relief of Chattanooga, 
and finally took him East to the supreme command. If vou deny 
Edwin M.Stanton everything else, my Comrades and my country- 
men all, do not forget that you are beholden to him for the 
General by whom the victory was finally secured. 

HE SHATTERED REBEL It was Stanton who defeated the 
HOPE OF A NAVY ])roject of the confederacy to put 

a navy on the high seas. When 
he called on the army to retake Norfolk, it protested that it 
could do nothing while the dreaded Merrimac dominated the 
place with its guns. When he demanded of the navy that it 
remove that menace, it replied that it could do nothing while the 
waters were under cover of the batteries on shore. So Stanton 
Avent down there with an improvised fleet of his own. taking 
the President along to have full authority at his elbow, and 
forced the fighting on land and sea, under his own eye. until 
Norfolk was retaken and the Merrimac destroved. 

HE RESCUED THE ARMY h was Stanton who rescued 
OF THE CUMBERLAND the Army of the Cumberland 

from destruction after the bat- 
tle of Chicamaugua. Word of its peril reached him in the night. 



Before the morning" dawncl he had worked out a plan of rcHcf. 
set his experts to work on transportation and suppUes, roused 
the President and War Council from their slumbers, and wrunj^ 
from them by his impassioned eloquence a reluctent consent that 
he should send reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac. 
With sleepless \igilance he urged and guided every detail of 
the movement until he had put twenty-three thousand men full\- 
equipped and supplied into the battle line in l\'nnessee. and all 
with eleven and a half days. He had accomplished the impossible. 

HIS PERSONAL The services I have cited are but a ])art of 
CONTRIBUTION iMr. vStanton's own contributions to the 
carrying on of the war. e\ents originating 
in his own mind and carried out under his own su])er\ision and 
against the ad\ice of the highest officials and in s])ite of the re- 
sistance of the entirt.' mililary establishment jealous of its own 
])rerogati\ es. 

HE FOUGHT A The close of the war served to bring 

NEW REBELLION out more ]>roniinently the greatness of 

Stanton. Reconstruction, for which 
President Lincoln pronounced Stanton in(lis])ensal)le. really l)egan 
on the liattle-held ; for the terms of surrender l)ordere(l. if the}- 
did not encroach upon, the field of politics. In this field the 
soldier was naturall}' weak, while the rebel leaders possessed 
an astuteness that was fairl\- diabolical. To hold the balance 
re(|uired one who was not onl} trained in that line, but who. for 
four strenuous years, had stood guard at that ])articular })oint 
of danger, in short, it called for a vStanton to penetrate the 
designs of the rebel diplomats, to warn the generals of the traps 
set for their feet, to ccjrrect error, and, by hours of fervent 
persuasion, to bring President Lincoln himself to reverse a mis- 
take bv which he, ina(h ertently and in the goodness of his heart, 
had put in j^eril a large part of the fruits of victory. 1 ha\ e reason 
to believe that in this matter, in which he was most w idely mis- 
understood and bitterly assailed, Mr. Stanton performed the dut\- 
most galling to him of all that fell to his lot. Hut he did not 
shun it, because he was Stanton of the eagle eye. who almost 
alone, knew what he was doing; and he was Stanton of tin- 
dauntless heart, who would sacrifice even frien(lshi]js and po])ular 
fa\()r at the behest of |Kitriotic dutw 

THE COUNTRY'S Tell me why it was that, when the as- 
HOPE sassin's blow had fallen and our great 

chieftan lay stricken, the whole people 
lurneil as one man to Ivdwin M. .Stanton as the saxior of the 
hour. While there wire other men of ability, more experienced 
in public- aflairs .'ind ofticially more a\-ailable. wh\- did he emerge 



10 



from the direful confusion holding- affairs in a firm hand and 
sending a wave of confidence throughout the land? Was it not 
because, when the illustrious Lincoln had passed, there was not 
left another like Stanton — so great in his personality, so tried 
in his integrity, so outstanding in his executive ability, so truly 
the Patriot Preeminent of his day? 

OF HEROIC MOLD Comrades of The Grand Army of The 

Republic, I must close. Only a few 
hasty strokes were allowed me to sketch for you roughly a great 
character as it stands revealed against the background of his 
time. It is this larger view that truth demands, for my dis- 
course is of a hero who lived and wrought worthily in a heroic 
age. 

The wounded Ivanhoe recognized his lion-hearted king in 
the blows that thundered on his prison door, and roused from his 
couch averring that there was but one man in Europe who could 
perform such deeds of valor. And I have tried to bring back 
to you some faint echo of the deeds of your Paladin, and I ask 
you whether America afi:orded another who could have done the 
like for you. You demanded a warrior with the lion heart ; bear 
witness to what you received. Had your needs been difi^erent, 
even then you would not have called in vain ; for behind that iron 
front there beat a heart as responsive to the human call for help 
and sympathy as that of any woman. And on that sensitive 
heart there rested a load which he likened to the weight of the 
pyramids, compelling him. in his hours of solitude, to wrestle 
with tears and prayers for strength to bear your burden yet a 
little longer. Abraham Lincoln was one who penetrated the 
secret of that strange dual nature and found in Stanton a David 
for his Jonathan ; each to the other proving the old Hebrew 
saying, "There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." 

And so I leave the memory of him with you today — Edwin 
M. Stanton, whom you do, well to honor to the utmost, prota- 
gonist, hero and martyr of the cause which, next to your religion, 
you deem most sacred : and, if you will, true comrade and elder 
brother, whom vou mav hold in the Avarmest afifection. 



U 



Comrades 



of the Grand Army of the Republic, 



Alert! 



YOUR HONOR IS AT STAKE! 



The PREAMBLE and RESOLUTIONS herein printed 
were adopted by unanimous vote of the Department of Texas 
of The Grand Army of The RepubHc, with a request for a similar 
declaration by the National Encampment at Des Moines, and for 
such action bv the National Organization as will make clear to 
the Members of Congress and others in official position the 
determined opposition of all members of the Grand Army to the 
disloyal i)ropositi()ns of the apologists of the rebellion. 

The NOTES appended are not part of the action taken by 
the Department of Texas, but are ofYered in explanation of the 
paper by its author, the Rev. Willis Weaver, Chaplain of the 
Department. 



WHEREAS. An org^anized and wide-spread effort is in pro- 
f^ress — 

FIRST, to have the designation of the Civil War of the six- 
ties changed from "The W^ar of the Rebellion" to "The War Be- 
tween the States" in all official papers and publications of the 
Oovernment of the United States; and. 

SECOND, to have the names of Robert E. Lee and "Stone- 
wall" Jackson included among those of "Distinguished Ameri- 
cans" placed on the Amphitheatre in Arlington Cemetery ; and. 

WHEREAS, The said organization has issued to "The 
United Daughters of the Confederacy" an "appeal" for aid in 
accomplishing the purpose stated, in which "appeal" the interest 
of the Grand Army of the Rejjublic in the movement is admitted 
and its name used in an unauthorized and objectionable manner; 
therefore 

BE IT RESOLVED by the Department of 1'exas of the 
Grand Army of the Republic, in Encampment at Dallas, this 22d 
day of May, A. D. 1922, that we make a solemn and emphatic ex- 
])ression of our sentiments in regard to the matter cited, to the 
following effect : 

NOTE on the PREAMBLE: 

The ofificial designation of the war of the sixties is that which is ap- 
phed to it in the extensive publications of the Government covering the 
records of the event, namely. "The War Of The Rebellion." This name 
is naturally disliked by those whose sympathies are cnHsted on the side 
of the attempt to dissolve the Union of the States and set up on its ruins 
a new government to be called "The Confederate States of America." 
This feeling of resentment has been nursed and coddled along by the 
southern politicians and editors and agitators, until it has brought about 
the formation of an organization intended to extend throughout the 
country, and already claiming a membership of a hundred thousand, whose 
object is two-fold, as stated in the preamble. 

To further their purpose they have issued an "appeal," as indicated, 
in which occur these passages — 

"That every chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy im- 
mediately appoint a committee whose duty it shall be to write or wire 
their representative in Washington, urging the passage of an enactment 
officially recognizing the conflict of the sixties as "the war between the 
states," and that all future records of the war be so recognized and 
designated; that the names of Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson be 
inscribed on the Arlington monument memorial. 

"Lee and Jackson are 'distinguished men' and served in the United 
Stales Army and are therefore eligible, nothwithstanding the prohibitive 
iTieasure passed by a republican majority. 

"There will be little or no opposition to its passage through the house. 
Tlicrc are many Republicans from the North. West and East, who favor 
such a bill. and. of course, it would have the undivided support of the 
South." 



They say "there would not be one word of eritieism," "because tlic- 
men of the Grand Army of the Repubhc are too broad-minded, but, even 
so, the G. A. R. forms but a small part of the nation, and, in any event, 
justice should take precedence over prejudice." 

And they add this amazing contribution to the history of the war: 
"There was a rebellion against constitutional government, but the South 
was not the rebel, for, from * * * December 20, 1860 * * * until 
the closing hour at Appomatox Court House, the South was the consti- 
tutional i)arty and when she withdrew from the I'nion she took the con- 
stitution out AN-ith her." 

To the G. A. R. man there is nothing new about this. It is the old 
"rebel yell" set in a diiiferent key to suit the time and the occasion. If 
it has lost some of its ruggedness in the transposition, it retains at least 
its arrogance and its spirit of disloyalty. 

FIRST, As a ]»art of the trrcat host of the sixties who stc'])pc'(I 
forth wilHnf^:!}' to do all and bear all in order that the Nation's 
Hfe mig'ht be preserxed, and speaking" for tliat \ast niajorit}' o1 our 
comrades in arms who have gone on before, and who have now 
no means of defending" their honor exce])t throtig'h us, we place 
ourselves firmh- and finally 011 the g^round chosen by our g'reat 
President and Commander-in-chief, Abraham Lincoln, and de- 
fined by liim in his repl_\- to "The Democrats of New York," June 
12. 1863: "Ours is a case of rebellion — so called in the resolu- 
tions before me — in fact, a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of re- 
bellion" : and again in his imiK-rishable address at Gettysburg — 
that the conflict of the sixties was "A GREAT CIVIL WAR test- 
ing whether any government conceived in liberty and dedicated to 
the ])ro])osition that all men are created equal can long endure"; 
and that on the victory- of the National cause in that conllict de- 
])ended the determination "that government of the people, and 
1)}- the ])eo])le, and for the people should not i)erish from the 
earth." 

The great army of the Nation, drawn from all the states of 
the Nation. North and South, except one, sprang into being only 
when the life of the L^nion was threatened, and it disbanded as 
so( ii as that object was attained. To ascribe to it any other ]>ur- 
])ose is to falsify history and to i)ut the brand of mercenaries on 
us and all our fallen comrades. 

NOTE on Resolution FIRST;— 

In his first inaugural address, Mr. Lincoln said; — 

"I hold that, in the contemplation of universal law, and of the 
constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual; that no State, upon 
its mere notion, can lawfully get out of the l^nion; and that resolves and 
ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence, within 
any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insur- 
rectionary or revolutionary, according to the circumstances." 

Three days after the firing on Fort Sumter he called for 75.000 volun- 
teers "to maintain the honor, the integrity and the existence of our national 
Union, and the periietuity of popular government." 

After two years had elapsed, giving time for the elimination of extran- 
eous matters and the emergence of the fundamentals of the conflict, Mr. 



Lincoln made the estimate of the issue in his Gettysburg address — that it 
was "a Civil War" on whose result depended the future of popular govern- 
ment in the civilized world. 

Long before the date of that address, the de-signation "The Rebellion" 
had become the official designation in public documents, in proclamations, 
bulletins, army orders and reports, legislative debates and acts, judicial 
proceedings and decisions. 

The designation may have been unnecessarily severe for official use. 
but it was true to facts. If the LTnited States was a Nation, then an armed 
rising against it was rebellion. These conspirators for a change of name 
know this as well as we; and the}^ are working for the change, not only 
to wash the hands of those guilty of rebellion, but to besmirch the honor 
of the Nation by the confession that the American Union is not a Nation, 
and that its defence of its life in the sixties was a mistake and a political 
crime. We protest against the lowering of the flag by trickery in 1922, 
just as we fought against its accomplishment by force in the sixties. 

SECOND, The designation, "The War Between the States." 
is to us particular!}^ hateful and insulting". 

It is faLse in fact. There never has been a war between the 
States. While there have been causes of dispute, and even threats 
of conflict, the American people have always found a way of 
l)eaceful settlement of such differences within the law and under 
the Constitution which was formed with that very end in view. 
We, as participants, did not go to war at the behest of a state or 
against a state, but under the flag of the Federal Union and for 
its preservation. 

The designation proposed obliterates the distinction between 
the objects sought in the sixties by the opposing forces ; makes 
the destruction of the Union as praiseworthy as its defense ; re- 
duces the heroism of a great Nation battling for its existence, to 
the level of a petty affray between local factions. If the Civil 
War was no more than that, then it was a gigantic mistake and 
an unspeakable crime on the Federal side : its heroism and sacri- 
fice — its waste — its heart-break and rivers of blood — all went for 
naught; what we looked upon as the defense of the National life 
was not worth a day nor an hour of the four years of agony; the 
most ardent hope of our lives — that we had been useful in our 
day, and could leave to our children's children the example of a 
patriotic duty well performed and a worthy object attained by 
devotion and sacrifice — dissolves before our eyes into the fond 
delusion of old men who have had their futile day and who have 
need to hide away from the pity or reproach of a wiser generation. 

NOTE on Resolution SECOND;— 

The question at issue in the Civil War was obscured from view by 
side issues of various kinds; but time has served to clear up the matter so 
that no one now need be in doubt except through inexcusable ignorance 
or prejudice. Perhaps as clear a statement of the confederate view as any 
is found in the latest work of the Rev. Thomas Dixon, who has put him- 



self forward as tlie most prominent exponent of disloyalty to the Union at 
the present time. Setting np Robert E. Lee in the most extravagant 
Southern style as a hero and prophet, in comment on Lincoln's "appeal to 
all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, 
the integrity, and the existence of our national Union and the perpetuity 
of popular government," lie makes Lee say "There is no such thing as 
citizenship in tiie Nation. We may become a Nation, we are as yet a 
Union of Sovereign States." 

The opposed theory — that for whicii the members of the (I. A. R. 
stood then, as they do now — is that, with the adoption of the constitution, 
the "fathers brought forth 'A new Nation" " as Lincoln says, and not "a 
huddle of petty sovereignties," as Henry Watterson calls it; and that the 
very existence of the Nation involved the right to hold its citizens to 
allegiance and to perform any office necessary to national functions, 
including that of self-defence. As Henry Clay, himself a loyal Southerner, 
put it, "H Kentucky tomorrow unfurls the banner of resistance, I never 
will fight under that banner. I owe a paramount allegiance to the whole 
LInion; a subordinate one to my own State." 

Alexander H. Stephens, perhaps the most widely esteemed, taking 
North and South into account, of any of the men of that time, put 
the truth clearly in his speech before the Georgia legislators, when trying 
to dissuade them from secession, which he called "the height of madness, 
folly and wickedness." He said, "let the sovereign people speak — I say 
to you that you have no power to act. You must refer this question to 
the people, you must wait to hear from the men at the cross-roads and 
even the groceries; for the people of this country, whether at the cross- 
roads or the groceries, whether in cottages or palaces, are all equal and 
they are the sovereigns ^of this country. Sovereignty is not in the legis- 
lature. We, the people, are the sovereigns. I am one of them and have 
a right to be heard, and so has any other citizen of the State." 

Mr. Stephens thus exposes the demagogery of the slogan wdiich Dixon 
adopts, and of which disloyalty has availed itself for three generations 
to keep its followers in line — "a Union of Sovereign States." Sovereignty 
is not in the State, nor yet in the Nation, but in the people; and, as in the 
case of every possession, they may apportion it as they will, part to the 
State, part to the Nation, part to local government, and still reserve for 
themselves a large measure of personal liberty. 

Before 1860 the question of the measure of sovereignty cotnmitted to 
the State and Nation respectively had been thoroughly threshed out in 
every possible line of debate except the appeal to arms. There was 
nothing to be said that had not been said many times before, and the 
breach of opinion grew ever wider. It was put up to the people, though 
they did not realize it, to thrust aside the politicians and theorists and 
take the decision into their own hands. The problem became, not what 
had been or what might have I)een, but what was to be; not what had the 
fathers done in the making of the constitution, so much as what would 
the sovereign people of the sixties determine should be the form of their 
government from that time forward. The fathers, however wise, w^cre 
dead. The constitution, however wisely formed by the wise fathers, had 
been outgrown in the progress of American civilization. None insisted 
on this more emphatically tlian the spokesmen of the secession movement. 

So the sovereign people of the sixties, the men of the cross-roads 
and the grocery, of the farm, the shop and the office, found the determina- 
tion of their form of government staring them in the face just as truly as 
did their fathers of the revolutionary period; and the concrete form which 
the question assumed was this: Shall the Union be preserved or dissolved? 

The query naturally arises — why, when the division became inevitable, 
did the main force of the l^nionists come from the North, and of the 



disunionists from the South? The answer is simple— because the spirit of 
76 was more in control in the North than in the South. This statement 
may be denied through partisan feeling, but it cannot be refuted. Every 
student of the political and social development of the sections finds abun- 
dant proof of it, and none more convincing than that in the literature of 
the South. In the South the tendency toward an aristocratic social system 
had dimmed the brightness of the ideals of the revolutionary time, while 
in the North the characteristic sentiments, the events and personages of 
the revolutionary period, were constantly recalled in popular writings, 
orations and the text-books of the common schools. 

But it does not follow that, I)ccause they had gained the preponderance 
of influence, the leaders of the secession movement had won over a 
majority of people, even in their own section. It should be remembered 
that some of the slave-holding states voted to remain in the Union, and 
had to be carried out by subsequent manipulation. In seven appeals to 
the people of Southern states througii the ballot-box, 640,000 voters 
declared for the Union, which was thirty-eight and one-third per cent 
of the total of votes cast. This was a large proportion for a time of bitter 
hatred, ostracism and dragoonage against Union men, and there is little 
cause to doubt that if a free vote of all the citizens of the Southern states 
could have been obtained the voice of the sovereign people, even in that 
section, might have gone for continuance in the Union. 

When tlie call to the national colors came from the president of the 
Nation to the entire citizenry of the Nation, all parts of the land 
responded. To call the Federal army the "Northern" army is inexact 
and IS unfair to the loyal volunteers from south of the Mason and Dixon 
line. Let us make a partial atonement for sad neglect by calling them 
up today to pass in brief review before us; 

Under what Commander-in-chief do they march on their heroic cam- 
paign for the preservation of their native country? Under Abraham 
Lincoln, a Southerner born. And his hands are upheld by two members 
of his Cabinet, one of Kentucky and the other of Virginia' birth; while it 
IS not easy to overlook another whose father was born in North Carolina, 
wliose motlier was of an old \'irginia family, and whose parents in west- 
ward migration iiad l)arely passed over the C3hio River, so that he was born 
on its westward shore and still within the shadow of the rising of the sun 
behind the mountains of old Virginia. So near to being Southern-born 
was Edwin M. Stanton. Secretary of War. 

This goodly host of Southern loyalists does not lack a worthy staff of 
officers. Let us name as they pass those who bore commissions as Major- 
Generals: 

Anderson Gcrrard Newton 

Benton Getty Ord 

B'rncy Gilbert Pleasanton 

Blair Hunter Pope 

Brannon Hurlbut Prentis 

Brice Johnson Reno 

Burbridge Love Revnolds 

Canby McClernand Rousseau 

Carter AIcMillan Scott 

Crittenden Meredith 'i'homas 

Emory Michel Vickers 

Fremont Morrow Ward 

French Nelson Wood 

Thirty-nine in all, and every one born in the South. 



Of Southerns who st-rvecl as Bripjadier (u'licrals, citlicr under com- 
mission or under detail in some emergency, the hst is too lonji: to. call, 
numbering 131; and Navy officers ranking as Captain or Admiral, 86; of 
South-born West Point men then in service, 324 in number, just half, 162, 
took their stand under the old Hag; commissioned officers of all ranks. 
South-born, in the Federal army, 4,000. 

And these loyal officers do not want for followers, all Soutli-horn like 
themselves; for every Major-Cleneral, a division more than 12,000 strong; 
for ever)' Brigadier, a command of three full regiments; from every part 
of the South they come, a loyal band more than a half-million strong, every 
man a son of the South. 

Here was supremely exemplified the patriotism of the war — in this 
host of Southerners numbering three times as many as secession was ever 
able to marshall on any one field; coming at the sacrifice of old friendships 
and all neighborly ties, bearing ostracism and contumely, doing their 
part without a heartening home sympathy, scattered mostly in small l)ands, 
so that neither the encouraging elbow-touch of old-time friends nor credit 
for their numbers were afforded them, they performed their part like true 
Americans, and then, their duty done and their country saved from dis- 
ruption, they marched on into oblivion. This is the great lost patriot army 
of the South. Their coming was unheralded, their services were unnoted, 
their fallen unnumbered, and their going unmarked. No great organiza- 
tion of their Southern fellow-citizens springs up to erect deserved monu- 
ments to their memory. But it would seem that there are enough to get 
together in a formidable and brazen effort, with the poison of disloyalty 
on their lips, to besmirch the honor of their patriot neighbors and kin. 

Nor is this all. We wonder that the soldiers of the Confederacy do 
not call their politicians and editors to account and demand: "Why is all 
this talk about some smooth and sneaking name for the war? When we 
went into it we were told that the union was dissolved and the states had 
seceeded. Secession and disunion were good enough names then; they 
were sounded on every street corner and stared at us from every printed 
page, and we were told to go out and make them good on the field ot 
battle. How is it that they have fallen into disrepute and you must hunt 
up some honeyed phrases as though you were ashamed of the cause for 
which we stood?" 

Well, the Grand Army of the Union is not ashamed of the cause of 
I^'cderal ITnion, but it would be ashamed to adrnit that it stood only for 
State against State in a petty strife within the Union. 

'i'HIRD. We rccogni/c in the movement we (le])reeate an 
effort to revive the corpse of secession, two j;enerations after it 
was slain, and to obtain for disunion a standing- that it could not 
win (in the fieUl of l)attle. Who are they who set at naugdit the 
\erdiot i >f a sovercig;n people and who turn back the current of 
National development? We protest against any i)hraseolo,gy in 
])ul)lic documents that affords even so tardy a recognition of the 
so called Sotithern Confederacy. 

NOTK on Resolution THIRD;— 

No battle of the Civil War was fought out with more tenacity of pur- 
pose than was the question of the recognition of the Southern Confederacy. 
By a fortunate concourse of circumstances, the defense of the Federal side 
fell mainlv to the part of Edwin M. Stanton — fortunate, because of all 
men of his day he was probably best fitted for the task by a combination 



ill liini of profound knowledge and skill in the law, an overmastering per- 
sonality, utter fearlessness of opposition, and a patriotic zeal that could 
brook no hindrance by minor consequences or selfish consideration. 

He first met the problem face to face when he entered the cabinet of 
James Buchanan and found the President dallying with the question of 
treating with the commissioners from the secession government of South 
Carolina. With stunning force and directness Attorney-General Stanton 
opened his attack, calling the President to his duty to his country, and 
warning him that his secessionist advisors had led him and the Nation to 
the brink of ruin, and that treating with the so-called ambassadors was 
malfeasance in office and the way to impeachment and prosecution for 
treason under the criminal law. From that blow — the first official utter- 
ance of the kind — the rebellion never recovered. It met that day its Gettys- 
burg in the field of political activity. 

Thirteen months later Mr. Stanton, as Secretary of War, became the 
champion of the same cause in the Cabinet of President Lincoln. The 
first clash was in the matter of exchange of prisoners of war. The rebel 
authorities had cooked up a scheme by which the wording of the cartel 
and the manner of the exchange should tactily involve a recognition of 
the government at Richmond. Now, contrary to wide-spread opinion, Mr. 
Stanton was a man of generous impulses and profoundly sympathetic 
with the suffering. His first official order was for the amelioration of the 
conditions of the prisoners of war. But he held the recognition of the 
Confederacj' to be an act no less dislo3'al and fatal to the Union than a 
major victory of the enemies' arms; so he was not to be deceived or 
cajoled into an act of treason any more tlian he would allow Buchanan 
to take the same step. 

No soldier in the enemies' country ever stood guard at a point more 
vital, or performed his part with more sleepless vigilance and devotion 
than did Mr. Stanton at this point, against which was directed the best 
talent of the rebel organization all through the war. Outstanding events 
in this line were the Confederate commission sent to Canada to get in 
touch througii the back door with public men in the North whom they 
could use. Later, the commission to Ft. Monroe, headed by the Vice- 
president of the Confederacy. Then the bunch of wily old-time politicians, 
unsurpassed in their day in the occult arts of their craft, who put them- 
selves in front of the victorious army of General Sherman and almost 
succeeded in wresting the fruits of his victories from his hand; half a 
dozen keen political tricksters making themselves more dangerous than all 
the forces of Hood and Johnston to the hard-fighting and honest soldier 
who knew ho^^" to lead and to fight, but not liow to guard against the 
political assassin. 

But the struggle for recognition did not cease with the surrender of 
the armies. The shrewdest of the rebel plotters, getting the ear of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, worked cunningly on his kindness of heart and eagerness 
to obliterate the marks of the conflict, so that he consented to a practical 
recognition of the rebel State government of Virginia. Again Mr. Stanton 
had to come to the front and. in one of the hardest day's work of his life., 
persuade the President to reverse the fatal decision. 

Still rebellious against the will of the American people, in the years 
that immediately followed, the secession plotters hastened to Washington 
in a desperate effort to set the executive against the legislative arm of the 
government and to fish out of the troubled waters a sulastantial victory for 
their schemes; and again the great W^ar Secretary, by the sacrifice of the 
last remnant of his vitality, withstood them, for our sake and for our 
fallen comrades and for our cause, until he foiled them in their pm-pose. 



And ever since tliat cla_\' the spirit of disloyalty has kejit the agitation 
alive, until now, api^arently, it thinks it has nursed along its propaganda 
to a point where, with the hands of the Grand Army of the Republic 
weakened or its vigilance relaxed, it can spring its scheme, persuade the 
great American people to stultify itself, and save the face of the rebellion 
of the sixties. 

This is the real animus of the effort to change the name. The Clrand 
Army of the Republic fought against this disloyal movement in the middle 
of the 19th century, and it is still fighting it in this first quarter of the 20th 
century. 

b*()L'RTH, We do not cherish hatred toward our o])i)onents 
on tlie Ijattle-iields of the Ci^■il \\ ar. ( )n tlie contrary, those of 
us es])ecially who have made htmies in the vSouth ha\e formed 
with tliem many ties of friendship and respect which we manifest, 
as do they, in joint meeting's and co-operation, and other cour- 
tesies as occasion offers. We recog^nize them as true men who 
stood hravely, as Americans always do, for a cause in which they 
believed. But of secession we think today as did sixty years ag:o. 
We are flattered to have the authors of the "appeal" regard us 
as "broad-minded men," as they say ; but we ])rotest that we are 
not sufficiently "broad" or lax to fa\'or the cause against which 
we made war in our }'outh. 

At the same time, we do not think it necessary to designate 
the Civil War by a title so offensive as "The Rebellion." If the 
officers of the organization for changing the name had put them- 
selves in touch with tht^ Grand Army of the Republic in an effort 
to come to an understanding, instead of ])resulning to s])eak for 
us, there might possibly have l)een found some ground of agree- 
ment. 

In the meantime, and with all the earnestness of which we 
are cai)able, we protest against the naming of the war b}' the 
vanciuished party, and the dictation of their choice to the govern- 
ment which they failed to destroy ; and this the more, because 
they choose a name which is — and is intended to be — offensive 
to those who stood in the breach in the hour of the Nation's peril, 
and because, in the act. they assume an air partly ])atronizing and 
partly contemptuous toward those who saved the Nation's life, 
and back uj) their ])roject with the false and insolent claim that, 
all through the war. as they ])ut it in their api)eal. "The South 
was the Constitutional ])arty. and when she withdrew from the 
I'nion she carried the Constitution out with her." 

NOTE on Resolution FOURTH;— 

There is talk of the bitter enmities of the war time as something un- 
reasonable and uncalled for. But this view is a mistake. The mutual 
hatred was as necessary to the carrying on of the war as were military 
organization and arms. The rival schools of political thought had com- 
promised their difficulties in the thirties because neither party was sure 



lu 



of its following. With another generation in which to work its propaganda 
they had been able to convince the South that there was some magic in 
the cant phrase, "The Sovereignty of the States," by reason of which tlie 
sending of Federal soldiers into a revolting part if the Nation would be 
proven an "invasion," and, naturally, the first article of the creed of every 
freeman is that invasion of the land by a foreign foe is to be resisted to tlic- 
death. 

At the same time, a public sentiment had been forming in the North, 
characterized by consuming devotion to the American Union and amount- 
ing to a passion second only to that of religious fervor; so that, to lift a 
hand against the integrity of the Union came to be looked upon as a 
crime concerning which the words Rebellion and Treason were but mild 
denunciation. On no other issue could the people of the North have been 
rallied in a great military- movement. 

Thus it was public sentiment, with its favor for one side and hatred 
of the other, that made the armies on either side possible. 

The assumption that the former generation was obviously wrong and 
the present generation necessarily right, will not bear examination. We 
protest that we bestowed neither our affection nor our enmity without 
cause, nor did we offer our services or do our bit for a passing whim or 
a fantastic ideal. Our cause was as real to us as our homes and loved 
ones and more precious than our lives. And we have not changed. AH 
through the years, in our organization and in other ways, we have given 
our best service to keep alive that cause and make it secure to our coun- 
try and our children. The movement which we oppose in this paper shows 
that the spirit of disloyalty has kept pace with the years until it now 
springs forth to demand that we step aside and give it free control. We 
are not good at stepping aside. There was nothing of that kind in our 
tactics. 

Why are these people banded together into an organization? Because 
of an interest in the welfare of the country, either in the day of its peril 
or at the present time? No; their organization is formed exclusively, in 
its membership and objects, by the test of sympathy with the defeated 
side in the Civil War. And what is it they are asking? Anything that 
will make the Nation more secure on the foundations of popular govern- 
ment that were cemented together by the blood of patriots in that terrific 
holocaust? No; they are asking that the blame for that immeasurable 
catastrophy be lifted from their shoulders and placed on ours. 

We have no quarrel with the confederate veterans. Two men it is 
given us profoundly to respect — the one who stood with us, side by side, 
in the ranks, and the one who stood over against us and showed himself 
a man. Our contention is against the non-combatants — the politicians and 
other self-appointed advocates of disloyalty, who use the old veterans as 
stepping-stones to the attainment of their own ends. 

FIFTH. In the matter of placing the names of Lee and Jack- 
son on the memorial at ArHn,s:ton. we call attention to the fact 
that neither of these persons is a "Distinsfiiished Man" in the 
sense of the act providino^ for the selection of the names. While 
it is true that both made g"ood record.? as young;- men in the war 
with Mexico, yet their armv service then, and even with the 
added opportunities of the fourteen years that followed, was not 
of sufficient merit to raise thetn above the trrade of colonel in the 
one case and captain in the other. The truth i^ that thev worked 



11 



their way to prominence l)y leadershi]) in a stupendous con- 
spiracy to destroy the Nation, and not to serve it. Obviously the 
Government cannot recop^ni/.e honors bestowed on them by a 
so-called Confederacy whose leg-itimate existence it can never by 
anv possibility admit. 

I1ie fact stands blazoned forth, for all the world to see. that 
the desire of these people is not that the South be represented, 
for that is provided for by names of Southerners that do appear ; 
nor that eminent service in the American Army be not over- 
looked, for the two men chosen gave no service of the kind. Their 
whole anxiety is throujjh these men to secure honors for the con- 
federate cause. 

If thinfjs have come to such a pass that, at the dictation of 
a group of malcontents, it is necessary for the Government of the 
United States of America publicly to condone the act of army 
officers who went over to the enemy on the eve of battle and 
unsheathed their swords to make eft"ective the greatest political 
crime of the 19th century, we suggest that a decent respect for 
the proprieties would urge that selection be made of men who 
1)roved themselves worthy by some signal act of patriotism or 
liy working their way to high command in the active service of 
their countrv. 



NOTE on Resolution FIFTH :-- 

Wc thought that it was settled in 1865 tliat the scat of government 
was to remain in Washington. Has some one stolen a march on us and 
transferred it to Richmond after all? Why should affairs of national inter- 
est be viewed from that city of sinister associations? And whv should the 
attention of the country be centered on the plea of an organization con- 
fessedly and blatantly sectional? 

The Grand Army of the Republic stanrls for Nationalism and for that 
alone. All its life-history — its birth and its activities—have been deter- 
mined by this principle and have had its triumph in view. And here it 
has gained its victories; first, in the conflict of arms; next in political ad- 
justments that were safe and sane by the higher tests of an awakened 
National life; and later by the propaganda of patriotism as a vital senti- 
ment in American thought. 

In the recent world war there were slackers, indeed; but there were 
no American citizens laying down army commissions to take up those of 
the enemy, and assisted, if not encouraged, in the act by the highest au- 
thorities of the War Department. That such a thing, common enough in 
the early sixitcs, is unthinkable now, marks the advance of Nationalism 
in sixty years. These petitioners for a change of name hark back to that 
laxity which the American people have condemned and discarded. 

As members of the Grand Army of the Republic we exhort our com- 
])atriots to hold fast all that they have gained at so great cost — what has 
made their countrv what it is today, and what alone makes for the glory 
of the .Xmerican Republic in the time to come. 



WILLIS WEAVER 

V2 «04? ELLIS AVE.. CHICAGO, ILL 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 708 677 3 






KVAVJ 












